Opinion: Modernising governance and operations

Trustees and operations teams have been hit by a barrage of challenges as they work hard to maintain business as usual. Our experience is that most have responded well so far, implementing their business continuity plans to make sure schemes could still pay pensions. This meant taking quick decisions about how to adapt services, and putting in place some pretty big changes very fast.

Naturally though, teams have reacted in different ways and, whilst the response to the initial shock was good, schemes will need to continue adapting to changing circumstances. Learning from what others have done, and what is working well elsewhere will be essential.

Our Operational Excellence team works closely with all the third party administrators and a wide range of trustee boards and in house operations teams, to help schemes improve their effectiveness. In this short video Sam and Claire share five of the best ideas we’ve seen that are making a difference to the smooth running of schemes.



We also asked some of the largest in-house administration teams, covering more than four million members, how they have adapted. You can see the results here. For most, attention is now turning to actions already on the agenda such as improving data quality and GMP equalisation.

These examples show pension operations at its best and the benefit of modernisation and digitisation. Nearly 90% of teams surveyed believed that post COVID-19 they would accelerate the modernisation of their service delivery. It is critical that schemes continue to improve the experience for members and put themselves in the best position to respond to future challenges.

Please contact us if you would like to discuss further.